


The Future is a Foreign Country

by salable_mystic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Culture Shock, M/M, Man Out of Time, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Slash, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 13:53:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11715714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salable_mystic/pseuds/salable_mystic
Summary: The future is a foreign country – and Steve Rogers is its reluctant and traumatized immigrant.For my Stony Bingo square "Far Removed."





	The Future is a Foreign Country

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in that nebulous post-Avengers time when Steve has returned from his road trip. Getting used to living in the future would, I think, realistically be an intense form of culture shock, and this is my small attempt to look at just how traumatizing that would truly be. I think Tony, having had to deal with various forms of 'not fitting in' during his life (age difference at MIT, being smarter than everyone else, etc), would understand. 
> 
> This is my first ever Avengers story (aaaaaaah, what am I doing?!), so, uh, be gentle? :-)
> 
>  
> 
> \------

By now, Steve has several similar answers to variations of the question “How is Captain America settling in in the 21st Century?” down pat.

It comes up in almost every interview and press conference he is involved in, his private disorientation seen as a delectable spectacle for the masses, and he always makes sure to answer the question from Captain America’s point of view and to give them as little insight into his private life as possible – Captain America is the one the reporters and the public are interested in, or _ought_ to be interested in, anyway. His private life is, well, private. (Not that Steve has a split personality or anything, he knows that he is Captain America and that Captain America is him, but it does help to compartmentalize, when faced with press conferences.)

For the record, the answers go something like this: Captain America appreciates the team he is working with; makes sure to mention how much modern communication methods are an advantage in situations where quick, decisive, and coordinated action are needed; professes to be amazed by the pace and the colors and the sheer vibrancy of present day New York City.

They're not the best answers, but they get the job done and the reporters off his back – and they also provide an opening for Tony to butt in and to make some joke about modern day technology and how the good Captain is both bewildered by some of it and yet a quick learner – both of which is true and which doesn’t feel terribly personal to Steve, so it’s a good spin to give the conversation, and Tony’s a master at spinning conversations where he wants them to go. It’s not like they’ve practiced it or anything, but it’s become a routine, a spiel between them, and as it both showcases lighthearted banter and teasing between the team and takes the heat off Steve, he’s really grateful to Tony for doing it, for covering for him when it comes to those questions.

Yes, Captain America is adjusting to being in the 21st Century and doing quite well with it, but Steve Rogers – Steve Rogers, some days, still feels like he is drowning. Drowning beneath the shiny metallic surfaces of everything, inundated by the never-ending news cycle, the restless pace of the city, the sheer speed at which everything happens. It’s piling on, one thing after the other, so many things he doesn’t know, so much history he has missed, so many social clues that fly right past him … entire generations of music, movies, electronics, accomplishments that seem startlingly new to him but that are already outdated and forgotten. Neither Steve nor teenagers know how cassette decks work, because they both managed to miss them.

Steve used to like general knowledge quizzes before the ice – before everything – and he used to be pretty good at them, too. The one time he has tried participating in one since waking up – after everything – was when the team was playing a quiz game on Tony’s giant lounge TV … and he felt as if he knew nothing, could answer hardly any questions.

“Longest river in North America?” Sure, easy. Missouri River. But then there were questions like “Name the members of the Beatles?” Who or what are the Beatles? “With which activity is Osama bin Laden associated? Which software company produced Windows '98? Which word does the 'e' in 'e-mail' stand for? What company used to advertise its products as 'Fingerlickin' good'? Marilyn Monroe was linked with which two politician brothers?” He didn’t stay for more of it, but sought refuge with Tony instead, in his dazzling, bright, futuristic workshop, which reminds Steve of the science fiction he used to read as a teenager, and not of the incomprehensible present-day city right outside the tower.

Steve still dreams about drowning and the ice some nights, but more often he is now dreaming about wandering through a thoroughly unrecognizable New York City, where people speak in a language he cannot understand, where gestures and facial expressions have meanings he can never grasp, and where everyone is either staring right through him or backing away from him with expressions of horror on their faces.

And, on some days, Steve doesn’t know if he can do it, can remain Captain America, can lead a team of superheroes when he has no idea what is going on in the world, what the political landscape looks like, who the good and the bad guys are, and what criteria can possibly be used to distinguish between them. He’s been to the 9/11 Memorial, and while he understands the gravity of what happened, he’s only ever seen the World Trade Center in photographs and films. Two skyscrapers built and destroyed in the city, in _his_ city, all while he was lay frozen in time, dead to the world, and life irrevocably passed him by.

“Culture shock,” Tony calls it.

Tony’s the only one who knows – well, no, that’s not true, Steve is pretty sure that _everyone_ knows, whether he wants them to or not – about his difficulties in adapting. But Tony is the only one Steve has shared his doubts with, whom Steve has _wanted_ to know, on one of the too many sleepless nights that found him staring out of the floor to ceiling windows in the communal living room, awake and lost after yet another nightmare, and that found Tony wandering up from his workshop in search of coffee.

It’s easy to talk to Tony at night – it used to be the only time when they really talked, initially.

The world is quieter, at night, and so is Tony. Softer around the edges somehow, less distracted by the constant demands on his time that Stark Industries brings with it, more introspective. And Tony, for all that he is so often brash and loud and nonstop, is a good listener, in the quiet, dark space in front of the windows, in the night, in the time that has become ‘theirs’ somehow.

That’s when they started talking, where their connection first formed, but it’s spread out from there to encompass not only their sleepless nights but also their restless days, be it short meetings in the hallway, shared glances at a briefing, or conversations in the kitchen, the gym, the workshop.

Steve now knows how Tony likes his coffee, what foods to bring Tony to get him to eat something, how Dum-E came into being, what Tony is working on, what parts of Stark Industries delight Tony and which ones frustrate him, that Tony doesn’t care for baseball but is willing to watch it with Steve. He knows what Tony looks like when he’s frustrated, tired, happy, sad, laughing, irritated, vexed, smiling helplessly. And Tony knows just as much about Steve, including how bewildering Steve still finds most of the world outside Tony’s workshop. The workshop is bewildering, too, but there it’s comforting, expected – it’s the place where Tony is busy inventing the future, after all.

But Tony – Tony’s not only willing to listen and to explain things, he also provides Steve with materials that he says might help Steve acclimatize to the present. They are a weird collection of things, and some of them feel a little condescending (the US naturalization test, really?), but they are, most of them, helpful.

Steve has now read his way through New York City guidebooks, travelogues, intercultural training seminar materials, biographies, military training manuals. He has watched historical documentaries, been introduced to slang dictionaries, and toured all sorts of things – museums, memorials, companies, factories, schools, … - some of which he only got to see because Tony pulled some strings and Steve got to go as Tony’s 'assistant'. Steve likes it best when Tony comes with him on these outings, or when he can accompany Tony. It isn’t always possible, as Tony is a busy man – but when it is and when they go somewhere together, Tony is really good at explaining things. Not that Steve will always understand what he is explaining the first time round, but Tony doesn’t mind Steve’s questions, no matter how silly they seem to Steve.

And, maybe most helpful of all, Tony has set Steve up with a couple of small temp jobs at Stark Industries, which both keep Steve busy doing something useful when he is not ‘Captain America-ing it’ (Tony’s term), and which allow him to interact with people who don’t necessarily know that he _is_ Captain America. It’s a way of exploring how people are spending their workdays, their lives. Steve’s making acquaintances, forming tentative connections with some of the people in the building, and this tenuous web of contacts helps Steve to feel grounded in this new world. Beneath everything, he’s finding, people are still people, with the same concerns, problems, and joys that people in the 1940s experienced. All the surfaces have changed, but beneath those, people are still – people. It’s helping. And keeping him busy, which is, all by itself, helpful. He needs things to think about that aren’t all the people he left behind when he went into the ice, or their current foes set on taking over/destroying the world, or all the things he doesn’t understand about the present. He needs things that he can do, accomplish, help out with – small things, everyday things, non-superhero things.

Tony, more than anyone else he’s met, understands this need for keeping busy, for being useful, in a way that SHIELD never did. SHIELD was focused on getting _Captain America_ up to date, on providing _the Captain_ with all the knowledge that he’d need to be a good agent for SHIELD out in the world, but they didn’t really care about Steve Rogers – Tony sees the man, sees _Steve_ behind the superhero. For all that Tony used “Everything special about you came out of a bottle” as an insult when they met on the Helicarrier, he sees _Steve_ , more than he sees Captain America, and for that Steve is incredibly grateful.

And Steve, in turn, is grateful that Tony is letting him past his barriers, is letting him see the person who Tony is beyond his armor – be that armor the Iron Man suit or the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist persona Tony wears for the public.

It’s odd, Steve thinks, that, out of everyone, it’s the man out of time and the futurist who are slowly forming a connection between them, but that is what’s happening.

They’re a bit like Janus, maybe, and if one looks at it like that it isn’t all that strange anymore – Janus, the two-headed Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings – with one head looking towards the past and one towards the future – and maybe between them they’re finding a way of spending a little more time together in the present, balancing out their uneven gazes to truly see each other and to focus on the possibilities that the present is opening up between them.

 

So, yes, Captain America is doing okay, settling in in the 21st Century – and Steve Rogers?

Steve Rogers is slowly, slowly, cautiously, and yet also somewhat recklessly, falling in love with it – or, well, at least with one small part of it – with the part that comes in one very specific, Tony Stark shaped, package.

 

 

 

.


End file.
